Following the Trend

A brief guest bloglet from Alison Morton, our property finder in the Loire:

The Notaires de France website records prices paid for different sizes of property down to sector level in each department. Averaged prices cannot reflect local individual details of commune, condition, or land, but this site’s strength is that it shows trends in actual prices paid, not the posted prices.

Following the general trend in France, Deux-Sèvres (79) prices fell (6.5% in 2008-09) but recovered in 2010 (4.1% 2009-10), but have not yet reached the level of the first quarter of 2008. The gap is closing, but local agents reckon it will take most of 2011 to do so. Thus, properties can still be purchased at discount prices. In the Maine-et-Loire (49), the trend was the same but more extreme, dipping 7.4% in 2008-09 and recovering 7.5% in 2009-10.

FNAIM, the French estate agents’ organization, reports that in 2010 the number of available properties was low in respect of demand which led to the remarkable recovery last year. But it considers that prices stabilized in the first quarter of 2011 and only low figure growth is expected.

So there you have it!